Mount Sinai Drug Discovery Symposium
About this Event
Mount Sinai Drug Discovery Symposium
We cordially invite you to the inaugural Mount Sinai Drug Discovery Symposium at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai on Friday, June 26th, 2026, in the Goldwurm Auditorium.
This symposium is organized by the Department of Pharmacological Sciences in collaboration with the Drug Discovery Institute (DDI) and the Institute of Translational Medicine and Pharmacology to showcase cutting-edge advances in drug discovery and convene leaders in medicinal chemistry and translational science across campus. Through this coordinated effort, we aim to advance an integrated discovery-translation ecosystem that connects patient scale data, molecular design, and pharmacology—thereby accelerating therapeutic innovation and strengthening Mount Sinai’s national leadership in academic medicine and healthcare.
The program is structured around the major stages of the drug discovery pipeline: target discovery, emerging technologies, and translation development, and will feature four to five presentations per session by Mount Sinai investigators. The symposium will also feature two keynote lectures:
I. Daniel A. Heller, PhD (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center), presenting on drug discovery and innovation
II. Richard B. Silverman, PhD (Northwestern University), presenting on clinical impact
Program Committee: Robert J. DeVita, Jian Jin, Michael Lazarus, Avner Schlessinger, Yi Shi, Daniel Wacker, Min Xue, and Ming-Ming Zhou
Agenda
🕑: 08:15 AM - 09:00 AM
Registration & Coffee
🕑: 09:00 AM - 09:15 AM
Welcoming & Opening Remarks
Host: Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD
🕑: 09:15 AM - 10:45 AM
Target Discovery
Info: I. Alison M. Goate, DPhil - “Human Genetics to Target Discovery in Alzheimer's Disease” | II. Inga Peter, PhD - “From Genetic Pleiotropy to Drug Development: the LRRK2 Repurposing Story?” | III. Avner Schlessinger, PhD - “AI-Guided Targeting of Druggable Conformations in Proteins” | IV. Daniel Wacker, PhD - “How Mechanistic Studies of Psychedelics Empower the Development of Novel Neuropsychiatric Drugs”
🕑: 10:45 AM - 11:00 AM
Coffee Break
🕑: 11:00 AM - 12:40 PM
Emerging Technologies & Platforms
Info: I. Yi Shi, PhD - “Rapid High-Throughput Antibody Structure Prediction Informs Therapeutic Design” | II. Masayuki Yazawa, PhD - “Developing Novel Technologies & Platforms to Identify New Therapeutic Targets & Strategies” | III. Yizhou Dong, PhD - “Lipid Nanoparticles Enabled mRNA Therapy” | IV. Min Xue, PhD - “Nanoteins: Multicyclic Peptides for Next-gen Biomedicine” | V. Avi Ma’ayan, PhD - “Integrating Connectivity Mapping Resources for Drug and Target Discovery”
🕑: 12:40 PM - 01:30 PM
LUNCH
🕑: 01:30 PM - 02:15 PM
Keynote Lecture I: Discovery / Innovation
Host: Daniel A. Heller, PhD
Info: "Nanotechnologies for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment"
🕑: 02:15 PM - 03:55 PM
From Hit to Clinic - Crossing the "Valley of Death"
Info: I. Paul J. Kenny, PhD - “Leveraging the Orexin System to Develop Novel CNS Therapeutics” | II. Jian Jin, PhD - “Drug Discovery at Mount Sinai Center for Therapeutics Discovery: From Biased Agonists of GPCRs to DUBTAC Stabilizers of Tumor Suppressors” | III. Robert J. DeVita, PhD - “Progress toward a Small Molecule Therapeutic Pipeline at Mount Sinai” | IV. Ronald Hoffman, MD - “Strategies to Eliminate Myelofibrosis Stem Cells” | V. Felipe Araujo, PhD, MBA & Louise Lammers, PhD - “How to Translate your Discoveries Towards Commercialisation”
🕑: 03:55 PM - 04:15 PM
Break
🕑: 04:15 PM - 05:00 PM
Keynote Lecture II: Clinical Impact
Host: Richard B. Silverman, PhD
Info: "Novel GABA Aminotransferase and Ornithine Aminotransferase Inactivators as Potential New Treatments for Epilepsy, Pain, and Hepatocellular Carcinoma"
🕑: 05:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Closing Remarks
Host: Paul J. Kenny, PhD
Where is it happening?
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